Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV Upgrade Pack review

System: Switch 2
Release date: July 24, 2025
Developer: Nintendo Cube
Publisher: Nintendo

Back when I reviewed Super Mario Party Jamboree last year, I called it “biggest and best Mario Party game that Nintendo has made in a very long time. Beyond that, it’s probably my personal favorite in the series; whenever I have friends or family over and we decide to boot up a party game, there’s a very good chance Jamboree will be in the rotation. I was very open to the idea of an enhanced version of the game for the Switch 2, and one that takes advantage of the console’s new features such as mouse controls and the Nintendo Switch 2 Camera with some fresh modes and minigames. Unfortunately, an upgrade that should have been a slam dunk doesn’t bring enough new content or features to justify its own existence as a paid upgrade.

So far, in the early days of the Nintendo Switch 2’s lifespan, Nintendo has taken a few different approaches to updating its games. Some titles, like Super Mario Odyssey, Pokemon Scarlet & Violet and Splatoon 3, received free upgrades that boosted the resolution and/or frame rates, resulting in an overall better experience. In other cases, they’ve asked players to pay $20 USD for those same enhancements. That is the case for both The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, which adds upgraded visuals and some quality of life features, but little beyond that. Some other games that are getting Switch 2 editions, like Kirby and the Forgotten Land, still ask players to pay $20 for upgraded visuals, but also add in new story content. In other words, Nintendo hasn’t been consistent in what exactly a “Switch 2 Edition” entails.

In the case of the awkwardly named Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV Upgrade Pack (which I’ll just call Jamboree TV moving forward), what we get here is something in the middle. In terms of new content, the headlining feature is Bowser Live, a gameshow-inspired mode that adds some camera and microphone controlled minigames. The DLC also introduces 14 new minigames focused entirely around mouse controls; these are playable on demand via Free Play mode, during a Mario Party match, or through a brand new arcade-styled mode called Carnival Coaster. Finally, the package offers up some improvements to both the game’s resolution and frame rate. On paper, it might sound like a reasonable amount of updates with a decent amount of potential.

Unfortunately, there are multiple layers of issues in the actual execution of the ideas presented here, and nowhere is that more apparent than with Bowser Live mode. While I was totally on-board for some wacky, mildly embarrassing antics involving the Nintendo Switch 2 Camera, this mode is so lacking in variety that once you’ve played it twice, you’ve seen all the content there is to offer. Remarkably, there are only three minigames involving the camera, and three minigames involving the microphone. Once Bowser’s gameshow begins, the player will choose whether they want to play the camera or microphone minigames, and because each round only includes three minigames at the most, this essentially means multiple playthroughs will feel near-identical.  To add insult to injury, Nintendo doesn’t allow players to play the camera-based games online, so there are fewer ways to enjoy the Jamboree TV package than you might expect.

That would be fine if these new minigames were interesting or innovative, but they’re just not. And if you’re above the age of eight, they likely won’t have much in the way of short-term appeal either. Two of the microphone-based minigames involve yelling as a control method; in one, I was asked to repeatedly yell “up” to help Bowser Jr. collect coins as he floated in his Clown Car, and in another I was told to yell “go” to propel a small vehicle forward towards a goal. They worked fine, but were over in seconds, and weren’t particularly fun. The remaining microphone game was a simple clapping-based rhythm game that worked about half the time. The camera-based games are mildly more amusing since you get to watch your friends and family act silly on the screen, such as when everyone is competing to bash a coin block with their fists, or when everyone has to tilt their head around to try and balance a stack of falling Goombas on top of their noggins. But again, each game is over in the blink of an eye, and felt about as exciting as playing a 15-year-old Kinect game. This is coming from someone who generally enjoys a bit of motion-controlled interactive goofiness, so I was pretty unamused by the offerings here.

Fortunately, things do get a little bit better when it comes to Jamboree TV’s mouse mode minigames. Some of them are fairly straightforward affairs, such as a mildly clunky take on air hockey, but others can be quite fun. One of my favorites was a minigame in which two players wield virtual spray cans, which they must use to paint a smattering of Bob-Ombs a flattering shade of neon pink, occasionally needing to shake the can to recharge it. In another, my wife and I needed to work together to scoop ice cream at an ice cream parlor, stacking scoops in the right order for hungry Toads. Many of the games are more simple, but I found them all generally pretty creative. I wish there were more of them, though – fourteen isn’t a horrible amount, but over time, the repetition of encountering the same handful of games had me yearning for more.

While you can play the minigames in free play mode or in a round of Mario Party, Jamboree TV also includes a mode focused around the games via Carnival Coaster. In this mode, you and other players sit in a rollercoaster that zips around Mario-flavored tracks, escorting players to the next minigame. In between these minigames, players need to shoot enemies that appear on screen using mouse controls; more accuracy results in more time being added to the clock. It’s a fun mode, and made slightly more fun when using a camera, which lets players see themselves on the “ride” so to speak. And with five course to choose from, there’s a little more variety here than there is in Bowser Live mode, which I’m grateful for. Even still, it’s not a very replayable mode in the same way that something like Bowser’s Kaboom Squad is in the base Jamboree game, and once I had gone through all of the courses I didn’t feel any particular desire to play them again.

All that leaves only one more mode to explore in Jamboree TV: some good ole-fashioned Mario Party. This is where it gets a bit strange that Jamboree TV is sequestered off into its own menu compared to the base Super Mario Party Jamboree game, as it essentially means that with the Nintendo Switch 2 version of this game, there are two different places in which you can play a round of the digital board game with friends. If you start the game through Jamboree TV, you’ll get the option to include the new mouse-controlled minigames during a round, and you’ll also get to experience the game running at 1440p. It looks marginally sharper, but I think the difference is somewhat negligible barring a direct side-by-side comparison, and I think more casual players may not notice much of a difference at all.

It’s nice being able to have the new minigames appear in a round, but worth noting that since minigames are chosen at random, there’s a good chance that you’ll spend most of your time playing the minigames that launched alongside the original game, rather than the new additions. Really, the only other reason to play a round of Mario Party through Jamboree TV is if you want to play a match with some of the new rulesets. That, or if you enjoy seeing your friends’ faces onscreen while you play, which can certainly generate some funny moments if playing with the right crowd.

The new Frenzy ruleset is a great addition to Jamboree TV because it condenses a typical match of Mario Party into only five rounds, which for the most part play out with the higher-energy “home stretch” rules that would be encountered in the back-half of a typical game. While it’s not revolutionary, it’s nice to have a way to play a shorter version of the game; Mario Party games can take a while, and in a social setting, having options like this is nice. There’s also a new Tag Team mode that is a more substantial shake-up of the game, in which players work together in teams of two and share coins and items. Players can even roll a new item called “Together Dice” to move together and perform certain actions twice, much in the way they would while accompanied by a Jamboree Buddy. It’s a fun twist, although I don’t prefer it more than playing a standard match with Casual or Pro Rules.

Speaking of Pro Rules, it’s a shame that it’s not possible to play a round of Mario Party with that ruleset from within Jamboree TV. Since the higher resolution visuals are only available in Jamboree TV and not in the base game, players will have to choose whether they want to play with a sharper image or Pro Rules… but it’s not possible to enjoy both. Again, the choice to separate Jamboree TV from the base game experience was a bit of a strange one. It’s also worth noting that because that is how the package is structured, none of the other modes in the base game, such as the single-player campaign or stuff like Paratroopa Flight School, benefit from the extra power of the Nintendo Switch 2 Upgrade Pack. Plenty of other missing features also didn’t get translated over into Jamboree TV, like the base game’s achievements and scoreboard functions.

Taken together, all of this is rather disappointing, and makes me question whether calling this package a “Nintendo Switch 2 Edition” is even all that representative of what is actually on offer here. As it is, this paid upgrade includes: a small-ish quantity of mildly amusing mouse-controlled minigames, a short-lived arcade-style mode in which to play those games, a half-baked camera-based mode that I found quite boring, and some slight improvements to visuals that only impact a sliver of the base game’s content. While my thoughts on the base game haven’t changed at all, I don’t think this upgrade pack is going to be worth the money for most people. A few hours of new content and a bunch of trade-offs makes this an inessential upgrade at best.

Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV Upgrade Pack copy provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.